Andrew Yang talks to Mishpacha's Binyamin Rose

[Music] so again i thank you for taking the time to speak to us so many people might consider the mayor of new york as a thankless job obviously you don't because you're running for it but it is certainly one of the toughest jobs on earth so what does andrew yang bring to the task and why do you want the job i believe it's going to be the toughest most challenging role of my life if i'm fortunate enough to be the next mayor of new york city but i'm running because i think i can do a better job than the other people in the race and i'm driven by a spirit of service where if you believe you can positively impact the lives of more than 8 million people including your own children i think that you have to take on that challenge and i believe that if i do a good job as mayor even if there are a number of people who are upset at me at any given moment which there probably will be given the size and diversity of the city uh that as long as i make decisions that i can stand by uh that benefit the people of the city i'll be proud of the work i've done what did you learn from the presidential campaign that you're able to transfer over to your run for mayor i learned that many people are frustrated by business as usual where government is concerned where many people around the country and in new york city have grown used to disappointment where bureaucracies have not been performing as well as we'd like and then when you go to them and have a complaint or issue you often run into a wall of red tape and there's very little personal accountability or responsibility or even responsiveness and that's definitely true here in new york city one of my main goals is to get our bureaucracies to seem more human and responsive to our needs and concerns but that's true around the country as well just a side question i saw where you once said that teddy roosevelt was your favorite president what did you like about him the most and what would you like to emulate i love that he was a champion of conservatorship in terms of our natural resources trying to pass parks down to the next generations i love that he was a person of principle and displayed a lot of personal courage where both politics and his own life were concerned i also have a bit of a family connection to him where i am the godfather of his great great granddaughter uh and so i feel like a sense of connection even kinship through that when voters hear the name of andrew yang so they most often associate you with your proposal to provide a universal basic income now everyone asks you how you're going to pay for it i want to ask a different question today you've started many non-profits including venture for america and humanity forward would you consider letting non-profits raise the money from donors and from other private charities instead of trying to collect the money from taxpayers i did get the question an awful lot on the presidential trail how would you pay for universal basic income but that was before the federal government passed a 2.2 trillion dollar cares act and a 1.9 trillion american rescue act that have demonstrated that we actually as a country have had the resources to be able to do dramatic things for our people if we chose to do so as you suggest i've started a number of nonprofits and i love it when communities come together and channel their resources and goodwill to benefit other people and i hope that continues i certainly think that the orthodox jewish community embodies that spirit of community uh and you can see it in the way that people take care of each other uh and the philanthropy within the community i do think that at this point the needs may be even greater than nonprofits are able to muster um certainly when i ran my nonprofits one of the things that was a constant source of need was just more resources like if you run a nonprofit anyone reading this who's run a nonprofit you're proud of the work you do but then you just think to yourself wow like we need to be doing more whether that's feeding the poor in your community or educating your children or or preserving your culture or whatever the the cause is you just think there's so much more to be done and we don't have the level of resources that uh that we'd like to so i applaud all private philanthropic efforts um and i want them to grow but i do think that there is a role in the public sector to in some cases amplify and augment the work that people are doing in their communities if you have to raise taxes in order to provide this universal basic income are you concerned that higher taxes might drive more businesses to leave new york city well i i genuinely think that's an overly simplistic analysis where if if you look at the budget of new york city we're spending over 2 billion a year right now housing homeless people and so if you invest in keeping people in more stable situations that may end up saving money on the back end uh similarly we're spending over 200 000 a year for each person who's being held on rikers right now so uh so this this so it's not a simple case of oh if you want to do this then you're going to have to raise taxes on x like there are significant inefficiencies in new york city that often are very costly both on a human and economic level and one of the the things that motivates me and i think that you all see this in your community all the time is that if you take care of people that there are many benefits uh in terms of keeping people in better health mental health keeping a roof over people's heads and on and on and that in new york city when we fail people we end up paying for it on multiple levels you were talking before about our community being very philanthropic we're also very entrepreneurial you also have an entrepreneurial background so what programs you have in mind not only stem the flight of business but also attract new businesses and very importantly for our community make it easier for them to start new businesses especially small businesses so i i came up as a small business owner and operator here in new york city and i believe that these businesses are often the life's blood of a community in terms of creating jobs and providing economic well-being to families the my business partner at this education company was the founder of the company jewish gentleman named zeke vanderhook he started this education company in the early 2000s i was the first teacher at this company and then i eventually became his partner and then the ceo in 2006. and i learned so much from zeke he actually gave me a copy of the sabbath and so i've been a direct beneficiary of the spirit of entrepreneurship in the jewish community in that my business partner was someone that observed the sabbath each week and has just such like a firm sense of his own uh judgment and principle um that whenever there was frankly like some kind of like expert opinion or bureaucracy we encountered he always like brought his own point of view to the table and i learned a lot from him so i completely agree that there's a massive spirit of entrepreneurship in the orthodox jewish community and that we have to do everything we can to both clear some of the obstacles for folks who are starting and running small businesses in your community and also connecting people to different kinds of training there are real needs out there that i think if we were to connect orthodox jewish students to for example amazon web services training uh or some of this uh the these technical skills i think there would be massive opportunities because i can see people being able to take full advantage of both the training itself but also then the additional opportunities for those around them but it starts with trying to get out of your way where some of the regulations on small businesses are concerned we've had a lot of talk in the orthodox jewish community especially in the last year with even some community leaders suggesting that it's time to leave new york and the fact is that a lot of jewish people are starting to leave for lakewood new jersey for example for florida because they can't afford the high cost of living in new york as mayor of new york what can you do to keep these families in new york we have to make it uh affordable for people to raise families here and i'm a parent myself i've got two kids one of whom is in public school one of whom is in a special needs school because he is on the autism spectrum and i'm very passionate about the city doing more to support families with special needs children i say all the time that special needs the new normal i believe that many orthodox jewish families have more children than than my wife and i and we have to make it possible for them to raise their families in new york city in a way that's happy and affordable and sustainable and certainly the central cost facing many families here in new york is housing a lot of families feel like they're getting priced out of new york they think they can get more space and more land in other environments so we have to do everything we can to lower the cost of living to make more affordable housing available and to make the development of new housing more achievable for people who want to build housing that's for the everyday new yorker and not an affluent yuppie who's trying to move into the city another reason orthodox jews are considering leaving is because they're worried about crime and personal safety some of this is related to anti-semitism and i know you've also spoken out about the recent attacks against asian americans which of course everything well this is very unfortunate at the same time there are calls for defunding the police which also scares people so two-part question what can be done about making new york a safer place and as mayor what can you do to make new york a more tolerant place well i was inspired by a story of a jewish leader who brought a holocaust survivor to fdr high school in manhattan which is a very diverse school it's primarily black and latino and what was supposed to be an audience of just a few dozen students ended up becoming hundreds and it became like the like a school assembly that ended up occupying much of the day and the teachers recognized the profound educational value you know unfortunately you know like holocaust survivors are not going to be with us forever so we should definitely be taking advantage of their ability to convey uh their experiences to the next generation as you suggest uh like i'm acutely aware of the surge in anti-semitic violence and anti-asian violence and i do think it is very much tied to the economic disintegration that we're seeing here in new york city where if you lose 600 000 jobs and many people and 60 million tourists many people look around and uh don't feel like they have a future and then it's easier for them to lash out at people who don't look like them or they may mistakenly blame for things that are happening around them i've been consistent saying that i think that the call to defund the police are trying to to solve a problem with the wrong set of solutions i do think that there are opportunities for us to spend some of the money that we're spending on the police more effectively in a way that improves public safety uh to a higher degree and i think that there are big gaps in our mental health resources and substance abuse resources that can be employed to respond to certain calls as opposed to having an armed police officer but at the same time if you're a community where violent crime is rising like you're going to need the police to be able to to perform their duties and i think that's something that most new yorkers sense and agree with um i've also committed to reducing street homelessness by more than 50 percent in my first term which is primarily a human issue and an economic issue but it also at the margins does sometimes become a public safety issue in the latest stimulus bill out of washington the city will receive approximately 4.3 billion dollars in direct federal aid but it's a one-shot deal let's say you were already mayor what would you do without money would you use it to pay down debt to promote economic recovery lower taxes all of the above none of the above we i believe we have one to two years of federal aid that will provide us a bridge to to balance our budget and we need to use that time as effectively as possible and we shouldn't have any illusions about the fact that we're not in a very rough condition financially we're looking at a multi-billion dollar deficit and so having grace period or lull is something we have to take full advantage of so we need to rationalize our costs as quickly as possible uh that can include attrition and if there's a way that we can use our people more efficiently the the money the way the money should not be spent frankly is just like perpetuating um the government's current operations as if we know that change is not necessary or around the corner but one thing i will suggest is that the scenario you need to avoid in new york city is a scenario where you think you can cut your way to success like that the danger is that you spend less on things that really are important to people's quality of life and then they look around and say um hey that like that this subway is not working very well or or my trash isn't being picked up the way i wanted to and then uh they end up making moves that end up decreasing your resources further and you wind up in uh negative spiral like that that's what you need to avoid so we need to invest very actively and uh intelligently to try and restart the engine of new york's economy um and that's where my focus would be and i'll suggest something that i think is an is a it will give people a sense of how i want to operate i called for uh a a subway fare holiday for the week of memorial day and that has a modest cost of let's call it uh like 30 million dollars or so to forego subway fares for a week but think about all of the people who would get back on the subway that week would visit neighborhoods would uh frequent a restaurant that they might or neighborhood they might not have been to um that they would go all over the city from you know coney island to the bronx and so and some people would come back into the city you'd end up having people re-experiencing the city because they'd hear it's the beginning of summer there's a there's a fair holiday in new york city we can explore the city at our convenience and leisure and it's cost free so that's the kind of smart investment we should be making here in new york city where you use a bit of resources to reignite small businesses uh and uh tourism you've come out in favor of taking control of the subway system back from the state the governor said if that happens the city will lose the 10 billion dollars that the state gives them in funding every year what ideas do you have to make up for the shortfall so the the simplest way to uh get city control of the mta is to simply have the city recommend 11 mta board members rather than four right now there's a governance structure that gives us 4 out of 21 board members which suggests why like city concern seems so ignored frankly and so if you were to change that board composition there's actually no reason why you would need to change the funding you know the funding exists as it is like you would just simply be changing the board composition that would be the most straightforward way to make the change taking this one step further the new york state financial control board was created by the legislature in september 75 that was in the wake of the city's bankruptcy and the famous daily news headline forward to city drop dead would you consider seeking new legislation to extricate the city from being under state financial control so that the city can have more independence if new york city were uh where a country it would be the 11th biggest economy in the world this is a very large and diverse economy um now i i'm eager to work with our friends in albany as mayor of new york city we can only deliver if we have a strong working relationship with the governor and legislators but i do think given the magnitude of our economy um that there is a need for us to have control of our own destiny it's one reason why i do advocate for city control the mta is that imagine running a city and not being able to improve the way that people get around every day i mean like that like it's like trying to operate something with one hand tied behind your back i sense that if there are various entrepreneurs and operators reading this they think to themselves yeah like that that's not what i would want for my operation either and so we need to have a stronger voice in managing our own future but we need to do it in a way that has the folks in albany understand that the city's interests and the state's interests are often one and the same they're very aligned particularly because new york city is the economic engine of the state and you could argue it's one of the main economic engines of the entire country we are almost 10 of the national economy there are incredible opportunities here if we are able to uh to make make some changes and and take advantage of them another reason families are considering moving is because they're concerned about the substantial equivalency education that would hold non-public schools more accountable for their curriculum uh where do you stand on that and what can the city do to assert its independence on that account if the state comes down with some very harsh uh new uh demands as someone who started and run various organizations like like my natural attitude is to try to see who's doing the work and in this one folks in the orthodox jewish community have invested incredible levels of not just resources but time and energy and spirit building these schools that serve their children and their community in the way that they want to and my first question when i was being made aware of this back and forth was what does the data say about the educational outcomes of children who are coming out of yeshivas and the data suggests that children are thriving and even yesterday when i was in kew gardens i saw a group of perhaps 50 high school students who were girls and i asked them how they liked their high school and they were so quick and unanimous saying that they liked it or loved it that i was frankly blown away because if you went to the average high school in new york state or america and posed the same question you would not get that response so my attitude is one of deference and gratitude to the people are doing the work to educate their children every day i think that any changes should be made with with that in mind i would certainly stand with the orthodox jewish community if i thought those changes were not grounded in the well-being of the children as opposed to some arbitrary guideline that someone miles and miles away thinks is a good idea but like doesn't truly address a community need like for me it's all about the what the kids would benefit from and not something that is a standard that someone projects onto the community the democratic socialists of america issued a questionnaire to win endorsements of city council candidates they asked if the candidate would visit israel if elected and whether they support the bds movement then if not why not i don't think that was posed to mayoral candidates but if you got that question here how would you have answered those two questions it would be an honor and privilege for me to visit israel as uh mayor of new york city uh the fact that i would be leading a city that has that is home to the largest jewish population outside of israel as a profound responsibility that i would take very very seriously from day one and i am against the bds movement i think that it's refusal to disavow negative intentions towards israel's very existence is is unacceptable there's a feeling in our community that orthodox jewish communities were first in line to be uh made into coronavirus red zones but when it comes to distribution of vaccinations we're last in line what's your perception and what would you have done as mayor what could you do as mayor to solve that inequity you know i i have noticed that uh the orthodox jewish community is often neglected or overlooked when it comes to certain government services like i've heard that consistently from people my objective is fairness you know and that comes to your schools that comes to vaccine distribution that comes to treatment where small businesses are concerned and that is a commitment i can make is that the orthodox jewish community would be treated as other new yorkers would when it comes to that kind of program or roll out thank you i appreciate your time and if you get elected we'll have a lot of chances to talk especially if you come to israel i'm based in jerusalem i'd love to meet with you and to jerusalem let's make this happen that's a beautiful vision most importantly my wife really wants to go i will see you soon best of luck thank [Music] you